Wild in the City, Exploring The Intertwine

John Charles Olmsted, adopted son of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., was invited to Portland by the citizen park board. Olmsted's visionary plan for a comprehensive, interconnected park system remains an inspiration to modern park planners. In his report Olmsted noted, "Marked economy in municipal development may also be effected by laying out parkways and park, while land is cheap, so as to embrace streams that carry at times more water than can be taken care of by drain pipes of ordinary size. Thus brooks or little rivers which would otherwise become nuisances that would some day have to be put in large underground conduits at enormous expense, may be made the occasion for...

Ross Island Vision Team: Envisioning Ross Island

The Institute has produced, with its partners at the Willamette Riverkeeper, Audubon Society of Portland, Greenworks, and other architects and landscape architects, a plan for Ross Island, Envisioning Ross Island (PDF), which lays out scenarios for how Ross and its sister islands Hardtack, East and Toe, might be managed as a unit with the Holgate Channel and the 160-acre, city-owned Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge as an urban wildlife refuge complex, public natural area park, and place to contemplate nature in the heart of downtown Portland.